


Illogical

by Eilisande



Category: WALL-E (2008)
Genre: Gen, Other, Post-Canon, Robot Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:08:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23204473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eilisande/pseuds/Eilisande
Summary: Humans have returned to Earth and robots are helping them rebuild their world. For Wall-E and Eve, it's also an opportunity to deepen their relationship, despite some misunderstandings and difficulty in recognizing the feelings that pass through their processors.
Relationships: EVE (WALL-E)/Original Character(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28





	Illogical

**Author's Note:**

> Translation of one of my texts. Reviews are welcomed

On Earth, everything is strange. Nothing is logical. On the Axiom spacecraft, everything was logical. A robot has a directive, fulfils its directive, reloads and starts again. The same thing happens on Earth too, but there are so many random parameters that Eve cannot calculate them all.

On Earth, there are humans. Eve regrets the time when they did nothing but aimlessly go around in circles on the ship. Now, they want to interfere. They have opinions about every little thing, and they want to participate.

"Humans - problems," she said to Wall-e.

"Humans - good", answers Wall-e. "Humans - company. Eve – company."

The answer is nice to hear. Illogical. Most things around Wall-e are illogical. The little robot is a walking disaster. Eve must spend half of her time watching over him. If she is not behind him, he falls into crevices or is almost crushed by a unsteady column of trash. Twice he almost got killed by another Eve because he mistookthem. Eve units are programmed to react violently.

Regularly, Eve must erases her databases, like all robots. Memory space is finite. She does it more often now that she knows Wall-e to make sure she has enough room for all of her memories of him. Mathematically, it is inevitable that one day, even if she devotes all her memory to them, she will have no more room and will have to erase some of them. She has already started this erasure process : Eve has deleted all the times she threatened Wall-e with her weapon, except one. She is not sure why, but it seems important to remember she once threatend him.

"Eve. Pretty."

Pretty is a word that human children taught him. Wall-e uses it all the time now. Whenever he finds an intriguing object - today a red, round ball with an old human with a white beard drawn on it - and each time he sees a new plant germinating. Sometimes he also uses it for Eve.  
The ball is interesting, but Wall-e is supposed to clean the area. Humans want to try something called irri-gation. Wall-e shouldn't waste time turning around children making noise or rummaging around for new things to keep. It is not productive and it is not his directive.

Wall-e does not like the word directive. Nor the word mission. He always knows when Eve is thinking about the mission. She flies everywhere around him, goes back down to the ground, says his name, shakes her arms, then leaves in the direction where she wants him to go and come back. Wall-e wants to please her, but there are so many interesting objects and the little humans love when he brings some back. He is even starting to distinguish them from each other now. Children are like robots, they all look alike, but it get easier to recognize them because they do not all move the same. It's even easier, because they have different voices and a different chassis.

Wall-e is not very good at distinguishing robots from each other. Eve says it's because he was broken trying to help everyone. Fortunately, the captain insisted that he and Eve have a medal stuck on them. From the front, he distinguishes her from all the other Eves. Anyway, for him she is the only Eve.

This morning, he walked past a group of human beings who were chatting while watching little humans. "It's stronger than me," said one, "when I walk past Kyle, I get chills everywhere. " The others laughed and said that she was in love. Wall-e wonders if he is in love with Eve. He does not know what the word means, but when she is there, his circuits do weird things and it is like he is overloading. It's like taking a very long lighting bolt. Sometimes he just needs to think about her for it to happen.

He could spend all his time watching it fly. She always wants him to go faster and stay focused, but when she flies, she still looks on the ground to see if there are any objects that might interest him. Sometimes, when she finds he is too slow, she even lifts him up from the ground to take him to see what she find.

"Eve - pretty", he said, looking at her.

Sure, the metal think that makes noise when there is wind is interesting. But she is much more interesting.

"Wall-e !", she answers with exasperation, then fly away.

He continues to watch her. Pretty is not a big enough word to describe Eve. There should be another one. A term to explain how the sun makes her shine when she flies and how excited Wall-e is when he shows her something that fascinates her as much as him. A word that explains how he feels when she turns around making reproachful noises just because he tripped on his own rubber track and when she brings other Wall-e units back to the ship to be sure that 'there will always be spare parts for him.

"-Wall-e!"  
Exasperated, she raises him in the air, then put him in front of a mountain of garbage. She wants him to go to back to work instead of looking at her, so Wall-e obeys. But as soon as she looks away, he resumes his contemplation.

He would like to have the vocabulary to tell Eve what he feels when he sees her. What it's like to no longer be the only robot still active, to have someone to share his treasures with. Before meeting Eve, he had forgotten what being alone really meant. He no longer realized that it hurt somewhere deep within his circuits and that he had forced himself to ignore this feeling.  
He will never be tired of looking at Eve.

  
Eve can't help but be worried every time she looks at Wall-e. He does not understand because his memory is defective and he is broken. She fixed him, but he is slower to respond and react. He is an old model, like her, but her fabrication is much more recent and she has been used much less than it. Wall-e has been in operation for seven hundred years and is as old as the Axiom. But the Axiom always had hundreds of robots to maintain it and Wall-e had to repair himself as he could.  
She follows Wall-e back to the village that Humans are building at the foot of the Axiom, grumbling. If she whines loud enough, she worries less. Illogical.

"Wall-e broken", she said to the captain while Wall-e is busy dancing with the kids in front of his movie.

The captain immediately drops his writing case.

"What? I saw him five minutes ago, he was perfectly fine!"

Eve sighs. Humans have given them arms and tools to help them. They could also have given them the means to communicate with them. Eve can destroy a building in seconds, but it is murch harder to be understood by a human. It is absurd. You have to be an idiot to create something without giving yourself the means to understand it. Consequently, Humans are even more stupid than Wall-e.

Wall-e is silly, but it's her Wall-e. When she thinks he's an idiot, she wants to laugh. When she thinks Humans are stupid, she is exasperated. It is sad for Wall-e especially that they cannot talk. She knows he would love to talk to little humans and ask tons of questions to the older ones.

"Wall-e broken", she insists. "Incomplete repairs."

"Ah, you mean he was damaged when we arrived on Earth? He was very brave."

He does not understand. Eve wants to puch him, but she is programmed to be polite. Most of the time.

"-Wall-e broken. Memory problems - slowing down - ineffectiveness. Forgetting protocols - directives. Fix him?"

She pronounces these words as slowly as possible. Humans sometimes have a hard time understanding even the simplest things.

"Oh, Eve..."

The captain gets up from his chair to hug her. Of course, she is a robot and does not need this gesture of physical comfort. Eve tries to ignore the small part of her processor that reminds her that she feels strange things when Wall-e reaches out to take her hand, so she lets the captain do it. He finally lets go and looks towards Wall-e. A child is sitting on him, hanging to him, and Wall-e is spinning faster and faster to make him laugh.

Eve records the scene.

"Eve", explains the captain very gently, "we could fix Wall-e, I guess, really fix it, not just his body. And yes, I suppose it would be more useful for our resettlement on Earth. But Wall-e is Wall-e precisely because he is broken and not just by your adventure. After 700 years of constant work, all on his own, I imagine that everyone would be a bit broken. Would it really be Wall-e if we fixed him?"

Unthinkable. Something inside Eve's circuits takes precedence over everything else. She abandons the captain, flies, grabs Wall-e and flies away as fast as she can. They must not fix him. Wall-e is Wall-e because he is the way he is. She doesn't want him different, she wants her Wall-e, even if he isn't quite the robot he was when she met him. Even if he is less efficient and reactive and that recycling him would make sense. She has changed. She can accept that he has changed too.

  
Wall-e watches Eve close his house's door without really understanding what is going on. Eve reacts as if a storm is approaching, but there is not. They are not in danger, but she refuses to let him go.

"Eve", he asks, "problem?"

"Eve = zero problem."

He cannot understand what Eve wants, so he heads for the door. Eve rushes to stop him. She's not angry, and Wall-e is sure he didn't make a big mistake today. He doesn't understand why she acts like this. Eve just seems to want him to stay inside.

To please her, Wall-e moves away from the door and Eve calms down immediately. He goes to the shelves, and she follows him. It has been a long time since they have both been there alone, there is too much to do to help humans settle in. It may be the first time since they met. Wall-e does not ask her if he is right. Eve is always sad when she realizes he has trouble remembering and Wall-e does not like when Eve is sad. With the door closed, it's as if humans and their robot friends don't exist. Wall-e likes having friends, humans and robots, but sometimes he misses the times when it was only Eve and him. There are times when he would like to have her for himself, and there are things he only wants to share with her.

Like its treasures. There are so many he still hasn't show her. Wall-e gently guides her to a shelf, the one he reserves for objects that shine at the slightest reflection. Fascinated, Eve lets go of his hand to grab a small round sphere with silver facets and spins it between her fingers, then laughs when she notices that shiny powder is hanging on her fingers. Wall-e laughs in turn. She rubs the powder on the front of his metal chest. The dust stays there too. Excited, Wall-e hops around the room. Eve rises slowly in the air to grab another object and present it to him.

The objects he has carefully classified and stored are scattered all over the floor in a few hours. There are some that Eve could help function, others that they broke accidentally. Wall-e spent days to clean them without broking them, but it doesn't even make him sad. He has rarely been so happy.  
His battery signal that he is almost discharged, it is time for them to come back to reality. Several hours have passed. Wall-e opens the door, and the sun comes in. They spent the night there. Wall-e put back the object he was holding on its shelf. He needs to charge and get back to work.  
Eve stops him. She no longer smiles.

"Wall-e stays."

Usually, Eve is always the one who reminds him that he has to get back to work. That the city must be clean, habitable and clean for humans.

"Important work", he reminds her. "Directive."

"Wall-e important."

He doesn't know what to answer. He never was important. He was one of hundreds, and then the last to function and continue his task. Humans say it was admirable, to hold on all these centuries, but he does not see what was so admirable. It is illogical to congratulate him, he just did what was expected of him. What else was he supposed to do?

But Eve tells him that he is important and he nearly has to reboot because of what that idea is doing to his circuits.

"Eve important too."

Her friend shakes her head in frustration. He didn't answer what she hoped or didn't understand what she meant. He doesn't have the vocabulary to express what he feels. All he can do is take her hand and lead her outside. He hopes she will spend the whole day with him, even if she is not designed to clean up. He does not go to the place where he worked the day before. There is another place where he does not go frequently. He should have finished cleaning this place months ago, but he prefers not to go there too often because there are a lot of incredible things there and he wants to be able to enjoy it for a long time.

When they get there, Eve scans the place and hops, excited. She goes from place to place without knowing where to stop and which object to look at first. Eve often acts as if those things don't matter, as if only her directive matters. She decided that her new mission was to protect humans and resettle them on Earth and Wall-e is always happy to help her. But today, he is pleased to see her completely share his enthusiasm. Often, Eve does not know how to simply enjoy the moment. It's very different from Wall-e: he forgets there are tasks he must do. Wall-e knows that Eve often finds him annoying and he doesn't always understand what she is thinking. It's not sad, because they share the same desire to discover all the things that the Humans of before left behind and all the things that the Humans of today will create. He doesn't have the words to say all that, but he thinks it very, very strong.

"Eve beautiful", he whispers.

"Wall-e important", she replies, placing a thin plastic bubble thing in his basket which makes a nice noise when she crumples it.

For the moment, there is nothing but them and the new mountain of waste to build. They're happy.


End file.
